Putting theory into practice - Elche adventures.

After arriving in sunny Spain on the Sunday and settling in, Monday was soon upon us. Luckily for me, I wasn’t teaching until Tuesday.

On Monday we were introduced to the staff of Topschool and (finally) were told who we’d be teaching. After the initial shock of being handed the kindergarten timetable with my name on it, Hywel agreed to swap as he’d been given secondary when kindergarten was in his sights all along. With his secondary hours, however, came an additional three hours of adult teaching, which doesn't sound much, but after we were told we’d be at San Alberto Magno from 9-5 plus travelling time, I was a bit put-off by the situation. Despite this, these hours were to be a blessing in disguise as you will discover later in the blog!

First day at San Alberto Magno college. We caught the bus in the morning with the kids which took us to the school. The kids were all so interested and kept coming up to us to say “hello”.  It was as though they were pre-warned the ‘giddys’ would be arriving as they all immediately recognised us as the English people.

The school is great. It’s big and has everything. Swimming pool, tennis courts, football and basketball pitches and 3 modern buildings which separate kindergarten, primary and secondary.

The five of us (me, Natasha, Miriam, Tom and Hywel) were taken to the teacher’s office and were sat down in front of a desk. This was probably the scariest moment of the month as the memories came flooding back of our school years and having to sit and explain yourself to a genuinely scary looking authoritative person.

Our first lessons with this person, who I will now call Angel, because that was his name, were good. Natasha and I (the Secondary-allocated Leonardos) introduced ourselves and I made use of some photos I brought from England, although I didn’t carry out any activities on my initial lesson plan due to lack of introduction time as the students had to take a ‘pre-test’ for their KET exam in a week or so. After this lesson we commented on how well the students were behaved and Angel told us we would have no problems.

Well. The next lesson was Science. Yes, it appears there weren’t enough English hours to go around so we got to ‘teach’ a subject both me and Natasha were poor in during our school careers. We were pretty intrigued as to how it would go. We arrived and the teacher didn’t seem to know a lot about why we were there.  I could go into a lot of detail here but I won’t. Long story short, the lesson was a shambles. Students were given a task to “talk about global warming” in groups. Well, can you call that a ‘task’? Not really. Anyway, students spent the whole lesson running riot, shouting, going to the toilet in groups of at least 4, and generally causing havoc. The science teacher is also new to that school, and unfortunate enough to be teaching a lesson the majority of students told me they don’t care about, but for those students that do want to learn, you have to feel for them.

The following day we were faced with another science lesson. I and Natasha felt a bit sorry for the teacher so played hot seat (back to the board as you lot like to call it) with vocab they’d learnt previously. They really enjoyed it but things got a bit violent and loud towards the end. Kids are so competitive!

Hot seat is a game I’ve sworn never to do again with under 16s due to the competitiveness and cheating involved. The first time I tried it as a lone teacher, there was a full-on brawl I had to separate. I then introduced an imaginary line across the room and said if anyone crosses it, they lose 5 points for their team. This stopped the fighting, but the students would then spend half the game at the line taunting their opponents to cross, forcing them to suffer the consequences. I then had to introduce the rule whereby if they left their seats they would lose 5 points. This worked well, despite having to deduct a total of 15 points during the game (for you new teachers, make sure you carry out your punishments!). If you are going to try this with children, I recommend no more than two teams (more than two is far too difficult to monitor), and enforce these rules from the start.

Our first week in the English lessons, most of the students were preparing for KET and PET exams. There was not a lot of teaching involved here which was a bit disappointing, but I’ve recently discovered some job vacancies asking if the applicant has experience with these exams, to which I can reply with a ‘yes’ – A basic yes, but a yes nonetheless.

In addition to Science, PE was another subject the secondary teachers were allocated which I was happy with as I love sports. These classes were always fun and it was interesting to see the number of well-thought out activities planned in the lesson. In these classes I was always the ‘assistant’ but I enjoyed helping out and encouraging the use of English.

A few PE lessons I was able to join in with the students, enabling me to show off my basketball skills and (lack of) footballing talent. On occasion, the PE teacher and I would organise a 1v1 basketball match while waiting for students to get changed, and one time, the two of us played against 10 primary kids. Great fun!

There was more English teaching involved in the later weeks, although the school had a curriculum to follow which meant we had less freedom as students had to work their way through a textbook. This wasn’t ideal but we were given the freedom to pick and choose activities from the book, in addition to creating our own, so long as they were directly related to the topic.

The staff at the school were all very nice people, one colleague in particular we all got on really well with, our P.E teacher Juan.  One of the few Spanish teachers making an effort to speak ‘real’ English, and not the formal ‘posh-talk’ I’ve heard from many of the teachers. “Good morning my dear fellow” was a common greeting in the secondary staff room. Really?!

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ‘hello’ as much as I did during that month. I never say it in England, but it’s the only greeting those kids are taught. Occasionally I greeted with “Hey, how’s it going?” only to get a blank look and a “What?” in reply. This motivated me to find a way of getting this vocabulary into a lesson – not an easy task when following books. Luckily I taught a lesson about the differences between formal and informal speech, and jumped at the chance to teach phrases such as “How’s it going?”, “What’s up?” and responses including “Awesome” and “All good”.

If I achieved nothing else, I was proud of this lesson and would go on to subtlety test students when passing in the school corridors.

The adult classes in Topschool I was allocated I was initially worried about, but after the long days at San Alberto Magno either teaching from books or exam prepping, it was a breath of fresh air to have the complete freedom to do whatever I wanted with adults. I really enjoyed these classes and got some great feedback from the students. The highlight of this was the long-running story beginning with “Kill the teacher”, leading onto “alibi”, to “prison break” to “island politics” to “design your island” which lasted a total of four lessons. If I can find time I will explain this in more detail in a later blog post.

I feel I have done a good job at the schools, and built good rapport with both students and colleagues. My final send-off at San Alberto Magno consisted of many high-fives, a few hugs and a few “I love you” comments. The adult class send-off was a nice after-school café visit with some of our students. 

The final Leonardo send-off was an interesting one. Obviously, the night before we had to catch our flight, we went partying. Some of us returned home at around 7am, just a couple of hours before we had to jump in our pre-booked taxi. I set two alarms, and slept through both of them. Natasha, who normally had an alarm, forgot to set it, and Miriam and Tom usually use me and Natasha as their alarms. I finally woke up to the sound of Natasha shouting "Get up, we have to catch the taxi in 5 minutes!" - We still had tidying to do (made worse from hosting the party the night before...), packing to finish and loads of rubbish to get rid of. This combined with massive hangovers, it just wasn't possible. We then continued to tidy up and went outside to hunt down another taxi. We were all panicking a little, but luckily we found one, which just happened to be the same taxi that was waiting for us earlier, and we made it in time to the airport. After all the morning happenings, it turns out our story was not even the most dramatic of our group, as one Leonardo had lost his passport (luckily he found it a day later and made it home safely). This took some pressure off us, although we still all felt bad for our mistake, one which I will definitely learn from. Set 3 alarms. No, wait, I mean don't go our partying before the flight. Yes. That one.

I am writing this just over a week after leaving Elche, and I am already missing the lifestyle and the Leonardos so much! The experience has been invaluable and for all you future Leonardo applicants who have probably seen the tefl.com ad and thought, “That sounds too good to be true”, I can assure you there is no scam here. Of the 30 people that were accepted to France and Spain this year, everyone loved it. Make the most of the opportunity. Apply and enjoy!

I have left Elche with many friends, some of which live in Elche, giving me another great reason to return in the future. 

To conclude, I want to do the obvious thing and thank UKLC and Topschool for this opportunity. I have gained so much more confidence in teaching and enjoyed every minute.

Good luck to everyone in the future!

Mike.

ps. Sorry this blog is so late…